On rather the spur of the moment, I was asked to do a story on starting seeds indoors. And so, I warbled on, as my friends know that I’m able to do, trying to help novice seed-starters avoid the most common pitfalls and frustrations. You can see the story in Saturday’s (March 13, 2010) Denver Post Inside & Out section.

But if you REALLY want to worship at the knees of a goddess of seed-starting, instead of this rank novice with only two years under her belt, check this video of Boulder County extension staffer and fellow writer and blogger Carol O’Meara.

She’s a right peach of a gal, O’Meara is, funny and sassy and brassy and savvy and knowledgeable as all get-out (especially about peach trees, in fact). We first spoke on the phone when I was asking to take classes to become a CSU Extension Master Gardener volunteer in Boulder instead of Larimer County due to a rather funky work schedule. I told her about my Proof of Life garden — the weed-infested patch of clay I’d reclaimed with xeric perennials — and she clucked and said, “Oh, you’re GONE, aren’t you,” and allowed as how, with proper bribes of chocolate all around, some arrangement might become possible.

Want to make yourself a self-watering planter — great for when those tomato seedlings you’re itching to start grow up? Check out this YouTube video by some brilliant scrounger. It’s a little small to be called a planter, but perhaps it’s perfect for our dried-out indoor air. Colorado weather. All you need is an empty 2-liter bottle and some scraps of cotton fabric. (I ain’t saying this works, and I ain’t sayin’ that it’s Martha-Stewart pretty. But if you’re one of those folks who forget to water, you might want to give this a shot. Free’s good and self -watering? even better.)

Scrounging, btw, is a great tradition among frugal gardeners — old fence panels for trellises, old windows for cold-frames, you know the drill.

Eight pounds of green tomatoes.
One hour kneeling in the dirt and dark.

How do you put a season to bed, on a balmy night before the first snowy morning of the year? The garden work isn’t over; there’s much tidying to be done, and a winter bed to be put in, an homage to hope and spring. And eating, oh, there’s eating to do — right now it’s a ham omelet with the last of the parsley from the brick planter in front of my house, and a chicken breast poaching to be simmered with potatoes and kale and onions for an office dinner. A tiny green lacewing crawls out of the parsley as I chop it, just ahead of the knife.

If you’ve never been in your garden by moonlight, it’s a whole different trip, like milking by braille, groping underneath the tomato cages, hefting the vines for the hidden weight, spying among them for vaguely spherical gleams. The crickets and then the coyotes’ distant call for company. Soon after I arrive at my garden I turn the car lights off; once I’ve ventured deep into its fading jungle they are more hindrance than help. The brittle, silvered leaves whisper as I unlayer their tangles, searching for any lurking denials of summer’s end. I find one last, little, orange squash in the collapsed vines. I pick a few tiny Sungolds and a bounty of Black Pear and Amish Pastes. I learn to guess in the dark at what might be a hint of red, a fading into yellow. But even green and hard as rocks, it’s their time to come in, I tell these wizened, crunching tomato vines. The moon comes out to give me a bit of light. The scents of basil and thyme, bruised by my clumsy feet and knees, waft up, and a donkey’s call echoes in the distance. No smell of snow yet here, on this first foothill west of Loveland, so I know it won’t come until morning. It’s almost balmy. I snap off some dark, bug-nibbled lacinato kale, dig a bit in the carrot and turnip bed, pet the strawberry plants, stumble over a clutch of downed sunflower heads. And look up at a sculpted sky: Waning moon, backlit clouds, a few stars.

We did this, my best friends and I. Against this backdrop of hillside and rock, we made this. Food for more friends, food against the coming of the winter, to share with them and a fire. A new flock of chickens stalks the beds for bugs, tries to hide eggs under the Nanking cherry. The stalks of the too-abundant sunflowers are piled for kindling.

No garden is ever perfect except in one’s mind, and no garden is ever over — there’s always another chore that could be done. But on this last night before snow, there’s a breath of completeness that sighs around the hill, with bird-strewn seeds sinking into the dirt, dried zinnia heads nodding good-bye.

Poach the chicken breast for a half hour in water to cover and the tamarai. Meanwhile, chop the onion coarsely and sweat it over low heat in a heavy, deep pan in a tablspoon of the olive oil and all of the butter. While the chicken poaches, coarsely chop the peppers and add to the heavy pan; ditto the sun-dried tomatoes. When the chicken is done, remove it and let rest. Scrub the potatoes, chop into big bite-size chunks and boil in the same water as the chicken for 20 minutes or until fork-soft. After a little rest, chop the poached chicken breast into bite-size chunks. When the potatoes are done, turn up the heat on the onion pan a bit, add another tablespoon of olive oil, then take out the potatoes with tongs and add them. Once they’re heated, add the chopped chicken and a ladle or two of the chicken-potato broth. Simmer that a bit to let the flavors marry. Add salt and pepper to taste; add the thyme and chopped fresh herbs. Devour hot. Or devour hot with a few shavings of really good cheese, or dollops of goat cheese.

Let us now pause to praise the “Straight Eight” cucumber, pickle of plenty, cornucopious cucurbit.

Around the Denver Post newsroom late at night, when the modifiers are dangling, the deadlines looming and the bad puns proliferating, we have an inside joke. We’ll say, “it’s the best Friday ever!” when we know we’re really in the weeds.

But I don’t think that’s the case with this recession. I think it really IS the best recession ever, because we’re primed to discover, and rediscover, some good things. Like how to turn off the TV, even if it’s “Nova.” How to cook cheap.How to grow food.

Before I embarked on last year’s gonzo vegetable adventure, I asked my best friend’s husband if cucumbers were hard to grow. “Cucumbers practically grow themselves,” he said. I was skeptical; the guy, God love him, grew up in Iowa, land of chocolate soil and water that falls from the sky, though he’d grown vegetables for years on the very soil I was planning to dig.

I can’t remember whether he turned me on to “Straight Eight,” or I found them myself. Sayeth the seed packet: “An heirloom slicing cucumber introduced in 1935, Straight Eight is very vigorous and productive … An All America Selections Winner.”

They ain’t kiddin’. These cukes just about took me to the crazy place last year. A mere six or seven plants pumped out a bushel twice a week at their peak. Because of “Straight Eight,” I formed a theory on veggie varieties: If it came out in the Depression and is still around, go for it. If it’s an heirloom variety, but still an All America Selections winner? There’s your sign. In that fantasy world in which I am able to impose discipline upon my vegetable passions, I fill a garden with only Depression-era varieties, and think of my mom and her three siblings, who grew up fed mainly on the produce of just such a garden.

The best thing about Straight Eight is that even the cukes I didn’t see hidden away beneath the vines, the ones that got so big we were certain they’d be bitter, weren’t. Even with the plants being hit with a few beetles and, by late summer, some powdery mildew picked up from the zucchini plants, the vines kept producing. They kept producing right through a couple of joke frosts. When, at year’s end, I actually bought a grocery-store cucumber, I found it tasteless, sour and dry in comparison. Not even worth mashing for a facial.

Last summer I canned 20 pints of cucumber relish in self-defense. For the price of seeds, some jars, vinegar, spices and some farmers’ market peppers (alas, my peppers were puny) I had Christmas gifts. A full pantry. I had what felt like real wealth.

Make that “have.” Because in that single packet, there remains enough seeds for this season, too — plus some to share with friends. (In our dry climate, you can get pretty good germination out of year-old seeds).

And Michele Obama says every member of the First Family will be helping to pull weeds — “whether they like it or not.” (Except, perhaps, her mom.)

If you’ve been following Digging In since last spring, you know that we’ve been following Kitchen Gardener Internationalfounder Roger Doiron and his quest to return part of the White House Lawn to its historical function: growing food crops. Doiron and many fans of this idea, including celebrated authors Michael Pollan and Joan Dye Gussow, have been indefatigable, launching Internet petitions and igniting a worldwide campaign — long before we even knew who would win the primaries — for whoever won the White House to put in vegetables.

They’ve won. We’ve won. The New York Times is reporting tonight that Friday — tomorrow — within hours — ground will be broken on a garden to grow 55 varieties. No beets — the Prez doesn’t like them. But it’ll have arugula, berries, chard, sorrel, peas, lots of peas, and every culinary herb imaginable. Tomatillos and hot peppers (you’ve probably heard about the first family’s fave Mexican restaurant). Two beehives. And if you’re on KGI’s email list, you got an email tonight (Thursday) with the new White House garden plan.

Michele Obama told The Times her goal is to educate children about vegetables and healthy eating, thus combating childhood obesity. “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.” A local school that’s had its own vegetable garden for years will help her start digging. Tomorrow.

Food gardening is as viral as the internet. Congrats to Roger and all the KGs who worked their outrageous soil mojo upon Washington. You’re crazy brilliant!

It’s time to bring it in. Bring it ALLLL in… the green tomatoes and the fat-skinny cukes and the one-side-ripe peppers and the still-in-their-wrappers tomatillos and the beans (if the vines arent’ dead yet — mine are) — and the basil and and and…

OK, so you can leave the punkins and the carrots. But cover the lettuce bed. I don’t know about radishes, folks, I’m still new at this game, though I’ll certainly find out because my patch in the community plot has a few rows of them. I’ll be finding out this weekend if a frost really does put some sweet into the kale, and whether mizuna will survive. The northern forecast is almost spooky: Tonight: isolated showers and a low of 36; Saturday night, snow and rain and a low of 36; Sunday night, slight chance of rain/snow and a low of 31 — THIRTY ONE, folks. The Denver forecast is for a low of 35 all three nights. But if you live on the east side of a hill, that cold air is gonna roll down it and pool at the bottom, so things could get nipped tonight and Saturday without the temps going very low. On the other hand, those of you in the south, or with sloped beds that face south and have lots of rock to pump out heat all night, could be OK. As with everything, your mileage may vary.

My garden buddy’s husband says the “Straight Eight” cucumbers could put on a second blast of production after the frost, and in my outside voice I say, “wow! cool!” but inside my head, I’m saying, “dear heaven, let them finally die.” There are now 20 pints of cuke relish in my linen closet and today I pulled 18 new cucmbers out of the patch. I’ve gone from offering them to friends and co-workers as gifts to plopping a bagful on the counter and begging, “for the love of God, please TAKE THEM!” Not as bad as zucchini, but close, my friends, darn close.

The onset of frost is such a wonderful, bittersweet, sad-joyful time of year. Today I plucked all the yellow cherry tomatoes I had the heart for, and apologized to this plant that became its own jungle of productivity a few weeks too late — all because I planted it a few weeks too late. A double handful of fruits might ripen to their sweet, summery potential, but the rest are hard as big marbles, some barely green. The plant did its level best and it was just my own mismanagement (it needed much more attentive pruning and caging) that kept it from producing about a bushel. But they will be pickles, just like a half-bushel of Black Pear tomatoes and the last Yellow Brandywines and balcony tomatoes. Green tomato pickles.

The rain and gusts are going to shake some leaves down. If your fall ambition is to go leaf-peeping, or take pix of the kids with a pile of fiery-colored leaves, this is the start of the days of last chances.

As for me, I’ll listen to a song by Dave Mallett over and over again and remember my friend Kay, whose favorite time of year this was. The song is called <strong>”Autumn” off of Mallett’s “This Town” CD and it’s beautiful and aching and sad and joyful all at once:

“Autumn takes me by surprise
Fancy colors her disguise
but the chords of winter must arise
and the wild geese must go down.
Saying “Goodbye to ye mortal men,
Goodbye to the rain and wind,
For us there are no dreams nor sins,
Just an ancient, winding course …”

I realized the other day how little time I’ve been spending in grocery stores. It’s been totally replaced by gobs of time spent at my local farmers markets. The Saturday Courthouse market in Old Town Fort Collins and the Sunday market at Harmony and Lemay are regular stops, and some weekends I go to both of them. And lordy, do I spend. Berries for the freezer and cabbage for slaw and tomatoes for salsa and anything I might take it into my mind to cook or can or give to friends.

But the other afternoon I had a crying need for bottled carrot juice, which is my de-stressing libation of choice, perfect for long days when I’m is short on sleep or brain cells or both. And a little lunch meat wouldn’t be a bad idea either, I thought. So I strode into the mass-produced, merchandised-to-a-fare-thee-well sterility that is the interior of a grocery-store chain. I suppose they’re trying. There were winter squashes from a Colorado grower at $10 for 10. I veered quickly around them to the refrigerated Odwalla case, grabbed up my orange Californicated elixir, made a U-turn, scooped up some natural ham slices and hastily scooted my oh-so-efficient non-locavore behind to the Land of Checkout.

Where I was greeted by the choice of standing in a long line, or participating in an exercise that I view as part of the long, slow slide of our culture into a Slough of Despond. Yea verily, I speak of the You-Scan.

Now, completely aside from any locavore ambitions I may have, I hate the You-Scan. I hate it with a vitriol that I waste on no other computerized idiocy in my life, including the Hermes production system upon which your Denver Post is produced, and let me tell you, I’ve had some hypersyllabic epithets for Hermes, as my co-workers will attest. I hated the You-Scan before Barbara Kingsolver got all farmy on her agri-self. I hated it before omnivore dilemmas troubled Michael Pollan. I hated it before there was melamine in dog food, let alone in baby formula and White Rabbit candy. I hated it before there was gogurt in the yogurt aisle. It forces me to engage with a computer that pretends to be a person, pretends to “value” me, pretends to give a flying fresh asparagus spear whether I forget to take my change, located under the card reader.

I type on computers all day, and though I do talk, they never listen. And if You Scans are supposed to make things go faster at the checkout aisle, why am I always being told to “please place the item on the scanner and wait?” So that a human can make sure I’m really buying three limes for 99 cents instead of the latest Stephanie Meyer bestseller at $26? If a human needs to be involved anyway, why can’t he or she deal with the computer and smile at me and give me my change and tell me to have a nice freaking day? If I’m so “VAL-yewed,” why the heck can’t the store spare a human being to interact with me, instead of a robot with the voice of a semiliterate bobblehead?

It’s never like that at the farmer’s market. Food is never depersonalized. I get my strawberries from this lovely girl at Garden Sweet, and I’ve been buying them from her since she was a teenager selling little tiny jars of jam. Now her booth has expanded to three stalls and she sells not only berries, but herbs and lettuce and flowers and plants. I’ve had a 15-minute conversation with the producer of my ground beef. I can sample each kind of Windsor Dairy cheese to see if my palate has changed its favorite. I can pet a 14-week old English Mastiff pup with a head bigger than mine and a Boston terrier puppy smaller than one of my shoes while I shop. I can choose which kind of Pope Farm peppers I’d like them to fire up in the chile roaster, and discover that this year their melons are from Rocky Ford because their whole patch in Wiggins got hailed out. A farmer with hands gnarled like pinon branches will tumble some extra tomatoes into my box when I tell him what fabulous salsa I made from last week’s batch. At the Monroe Organic Farm booth my eyes can devour a rainbow of bell peppers, yellow and red and green and purple. The market is a visual feast, a tactile wallow, a surfeit of connection; all food is personal here, and it makes a glutton of me. At the pasta booth I pick up some blackberry balsamic vinegar, and after paying I tell the woman who runs the booth that I pour it over walnuts before roasting them. “Oh,” she says, “like that story in The Denver Post last year.” “I wrote that!” I exclaim, and we both take laughing delight at this link between the labor of both of our pairs of hands.

There are no bobblehead voices at the market. There is exhaustion, and on the day of a long, cold downpour there is some dejection, and there is some disgruntlement when a vendor isn’t having good sales. But nobody’s ever told me to “please place the item on the scanner and wait.”
These autumn Saturdays, as part of my Master Gardener volunteer hours, I help the market vendors check out They pay a percentage fee to sell at the courthouse, and they arrive at 5:45 a.m. in the dark of morning, after being up late the night before harvesting or preparing. At the end of the market we collect this fee and record their sales and taxes and food stamps. I love talking to the vendors. There’s no false, disembodied cheer; they are not selling useless overscented pre-packaged focus-grouped colored-plastic geegaws they don’t believe in. Instead there’s Steve from Ela Family Farms, finally coming over with his wild hair and his even wilder grin, dropping to his knees in front of our table because he’s so tired that stooping over it would likely mean falling on top of us. We joke that it’s because he’s the last to get packed up and totalled up and he’s begging us for mercy, but we know it’s because he’s been completely besieged. There are so many people wanting boxes and boxes of his plums and peaches and apples and jams and butters, and they just wouldn’t go away when the market closed.

And still, even though it’s over, he’s willing to go back to his truck to get a bag of plums for one of the other market helpers, a sale that we know he’ll record the following week because he’s unfailingly honest. I put my hand in my pocket as I leave and find a business card from Karen at Wolf Moon Farms, a card she gave me because she actually does care that my tomatillo plants aren’t producing in the quantities I need to make salsa, and I’m to call her in advance and she’ll bring me a whole box if she’s got ‘em. Every time I go to the market, the hands that touched the seeds, that touched the earth that grew this food, touch mine, and something blessed passes between us, beyond food and beyond money, without the aid of microchips, something ageless.

I will miss summer — miss the sunshine, miss the planting, miss the warmth, miss the bees — but when the last pumpkin is carried away in the arms of a child in late October, I know I’ll miss the markets most of all.

So much to plant, do, see, plan, buy … There’s plenty good garden stuff going on out there in the dog days of August. If you’re despairing about your case of Total Tomato Denial Syndrome, turn to our Style section for a roundup of veggies it’s not too late to plant. Lettuce loves it cool, and folk, it’s cool now. I’m not saying we’re not going to get another spell of hot, but 48-degree nights? That’s lettuce weather. (And don’t forget, this Friday’s the last day to tell me your tomato tales and win a copy of Tim Stark’s “Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer — read the post below for details.)

What are you doing to keep your hands dirty? Personally, Digging In went on a field trip — to Santa Fe, down the back alleys of its legendary swanky art galleries, to look at plants and gardens.

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I got the idea from Seeds of Change, which offers two annual farm tours, one last Sunday and one coming up in September. I also lucked into meeting Jennifer, a landscape architect and the best Santa Fe garden guide and hostess ever. Jennifer and I wandered up Canyon Road, noshing on shrubbery that offered up ripe chokecherries and currants, stretching up to tree branches to grab tart mulberries. We ducked into tiny pocket paradises, rocked on stone chairs in a Tibetan garden, ogled espaliered apple orchards and snuffled milkweed blossoms.

And then we stumbled onto Elspeth Bobbs’ place.

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Let me just say, words fail me. This 25-“room” private garden, testimony to one woman’s whims and obsessions and her ability to draw in artists and helpers and family and sustainability geeks, bowled me over. From a room that both pays tribute, and thumbs its nose at, all religion, to a giant spiral sculpture that celebrates poetry and math and bees and divine coincidence, to the food gardens bursting with flowers and purple cauliflower and squash and four successions of sweet corn … to the tiny knotwork shrub garden … I’ve never seen anything like it. Full of secrets and revelations and visions and meanderings and murals and … well. More when my sense of wonder allows me to figure out how to describe it.

Next I paid a visit to the high holy of Western gardening, High Country Gardens’ Santa Fe Greenhouse. On the web and in the minds of gardeners, this is a site of pilgrimage. But in Santa Fe, it’s also a place to buy and see. Kindly, funny Karen, after picking me out a salvia variety that might overwinter on my hell corner where “Wild Thing” did not, pointed me toward the xeric demonstration garden, where I saw funky sedums that bloom in red flowers on stalks and gnarled pines and agastaches of all shapes and colors, blue spireas awash in bees.

But because Santa Fe has had an unusually rainy summer, the real showstopper was the cottage garden. Towering, buttercream hollyhocks waved above my head. Shrub roses bursting their beds to grow to the size of Volkswagens, one playing host to a 7-inch-wide swallowtail butterfly, fanning itself in the shade. I spent as much time as I could, and then, with a half-hour left to shop, scooped up my “Ultra Violet” salvias and quickly scouted the half-off big pots Karen had tipped me off to. I came home with four! If you have a fave garden store here in Colorado, now’s the time to go. You can nab great deals on plants, shrubs, trees, and sometimes hard goods like pots, gloves, garden bling and tools they just don’t want to keep in inventory. It’s also true at some online stores, but this is a good time to buy local and make sure that your favorite business stays in business.

Then it was back to Jennifer’s house for a marvelous dinner on the patio with wine and stories and home-grown patty pan squash and tomatoes and basil. We completely forgot the fresh little peppercini peppers we’d gotten at the Santa Fe farmer’s market, where they were simply charring them in a pan with olive oil and salt and then eating them whole off the stem, seeds and all.

More soon on the tour of the Seeds of Change farm. Cardoons! Devil’s Claw! Squash! Biodiesel!

These are the little Rond de Nice zukes that I waxed poetic about back in March — the ones I thought would be non-world-dominating, non-sneaky. But they ARE plenty exuberant and plenty abundant, and one cluster of them is plenty happy in the melon patch at my friend’s. She’s been eating blossoms for a bit, and last weekend I harvested two, one to chop and saute, and one to scoop out, stuff with the chicken-sausage-zucchini-poblano pepper macaroni and cheese recipe I’ve invented, and bake.

Something about that recipe made the entire kitchen smell divine. And if it wasn’t poblano peppers that I grew, oh well. (My saved seeds never germinated). If your garden, like mine, is delivering mixed blessings right now — somethings, like zucchini, doing great, others doing quite poopily, thank you, well, get thee to your local farmer’s market for cherries and lettuce and corn, oh my! My insanely abundant weekend haul included Amish speckled lettuce and spring turnips — I’d never known there were such things. The lettuce is a little chewy, a little on the bitter side, but ANY lettuce that looks good in this heat is fabulous in my book. And it tasted great with a few tomatoes and some olive oil and salt dumped on it. Dressing? I don’t need no stinkin’ dressing!

And if you can’t get to a farmer’s market, scurry to your local county fair and check out the veggies and fruits there. I was helping check in the fruits and veggies at Larimer County this morning, and oh! White acorn squashes to die for. Shiny yellow pumpkin-looking squash, in daddy and momma and baby bear sizes. One woman had GOOSEBERRIES and CURRANTS. A young 4-H’er named Nora finished tagging her own entries, then joined the ranks of volunteers, scurrying around our shelves delivering the plates of entries to their proper, labeled shelves. State entomologist Whitney Cranshaw had his usual, perennially award-winning kohlrabi. Extension Agent Alison Stoven, despite having had her garden smacked around by the Windsor tornado, had some fine-lookin’ pineapple mint, among other entries. And one proud grandma shepherded her daughter’s huge sugar beet entry. My brain is a blur of plates of peppers and string beans and vases of basil and dill and sage.

So if the blur of political news or the heat or traffic or just the insane rush of life has you down, there’s an antidote. Throw a cold go-cup of lemonade in the car and find your farmer’s market, and then your county fair. I defy you to leave without a smile.

I don’t know what this tool is called. I don’t own it. I don’t know where to buy one. And my friend, who does own it, can’t remember where she picked it up. But it’s just indispensible. After an experience ineptly swinging a full-sized mattock for 20 minutes just about fried every muscle in my not-exactly-terminator-buff upper body, I became inordinately fond of this little cultivator/digger/turf-remover/weeder/thingie, which I shall henceforth refer to as “the mini mattock“. Here’s what it can do:

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The mini-mattock made re-berming the moats in the melon garden quick work. The network of moats allows my garden partners — the couple whose land and diligence and knowledge and watchfulness and tolerance I am borrowing in return for, we hope, melons and cukes and beans and tomatoes and peppers and more cukes — and I to water less frequently than twice a day in this awful heat.

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But they need to be expanded and reinforced and patted and firmed every so often. Water takes its toll on that slight slope, and so, we think, do the chickens who still find their way in every now and again to wallow in that slightly cooler soil, in much the way big dogs dig down to a cooler layer of dirt to lay their bellies on.

My second favorite tool: The internet, or as famous knitting blogger Crazy Aunt Purl calls it, “the internets.” “I loves the internets,” Purl says, and I agree. Because the internet is the portal to a world of local info at your fingertips, especially Colorado State University Extension and its many county-level offices. This is your federal, state, and county tax dollars at work, folks, and if you don’t use it, you’ve got no one to blame but yourbadself for your garden failures. You’d be amazed at the myriad of services your county extension office offers. They can tell you how to find a lab to test your soil, and I don’t mean a big black dog to taste it and pronounce it fit to roll in. They can help you identify the bug attacking your tree. They really can solve most of your garden mysteries. They can’t wade into legal or medical battles for you, but there’s a wealth of info at your fingertips, whether those fingertips are on computer keys or the phone’s keypad.

Go to this link to search extension’s vast variety of fact sheets available online.

Click this one for a handy index of various gardening topics, updated seasonally (for example, right now, you’ll find watering restrictions and mystery bites and itches, among many other topics).

And click this one to find your county extension office’s phone number.

During the summer gardening season, which here runs through September, many county extension offices have volunteers and apprentice volunteers (like this blogger) staffing a telephone help line from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. I’ve now taken questions on wounded trees and mystery bugs that fly in and eat everything in the garden at night. I’ve identified a hollyhock from an emailed photo (my mom grows the same one!) and chatted with a woman who’d gotten together with her subdivision neighbors to investigate water-saving technology for the neighborhood’s common turf areas. For very small fees, you can bring in a sample of your plant, or a bug (dead and pickled in alcohol, please) and extension agents — yes, the paid pros — will figure out what it is. You can have the efficiency and coverage of your sprinkler system checked out — for free — in many cities. For a mere $25 an hour (that’s the fee in Larimer County, at least) the Tree Team will pay you a visit to analyze and try to answer your tree problems. Tree Team folks often have an extra dose of training. Some counties also offer lawn visits to tackle turf issues. Those cost a bit more, but at least you know the person giving you advice has no vested interest in selling you a product.

And if you really, really, really want to get thorougly sucked into the green world, check out your county’s Master Gardener program. That’s part of what drew me further into this divine madness of gardening as if my life depended on it. Classes on the Front Range are taught by top instructors, folks whose enthusiasm and humor are completely, virally infectious.

Susan Clotfelter has always played in the dirt, but got dragged into gardening as an obsession when she reclaimed her hell corner: a weed-infested patch of clay inhabited by one tough, lonely lilac and a thicket of weeds. Along with training as a Colorado State University Extension Master Gardener volunteer, she dug deeper with beds of herbs and lettuce at her home and rows of vegetables wherever she could borrow land. She writes for The Denver Post and other publications and appears on community radio.

Julie's passion for gardening began in spring of 2000 when she bought a fixer-upper in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood, and realized that the landsape was in desperate need of some TLC. During the drought of 2003, she decided to give up on bluegrass and xeriscape her front yard. She wrote about the journey in the Rocky Mountain News, in a series called Mud, Sweat & Tears: A Xeriscape story. Julie is an avid veggie gardener as well as a seasoned water gardener.